She knew she didn’t look suspicious, but the problem was, they were wolves, with an amazing sense of smell, and she was a lynx shifter. They were already tilting their heads in the air, sniffing, looking around…
The fact that she was a lynx shifter in a human town wasn’t a big deal by itself. Shifters travelled through human areas all of the time. However, since they were looking for a lynx, she knew they were going to come over and question her, and who knew where that would end up. She was sure that photographs of her had been circulated to shifters all over the country. She was suddenly self-conscious. Was her wig convincing enough? Could she pull this off?
She started casually strolling back to the minivan. As she did, the shifters started walking towards her. She couldn’t avoid their gaze; shifter etiquette called for her to at least acknowledge their presence.
She glanced up and nodded at them and then looked away. Running would only attract attention, and there were a couple of humans filling up their tanks with gas, so she didn’t have the option of shifting and bolting for the woods. That was a pity, because if she could make it to the tree line, she’d be all set.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” one of them said firmly. Big guy with a crew cut.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Warden Neil Lawrence, of the Rushing River Pack. I need to see your identification.”
She shot him an annoyed look, fishing in her purse.
“What’s all this about? I’m running late.”
“It’s a matter of Shifter national security. ID” His tone was a little less friendly now.
Acting put upon, she pulled her wallet out of her purse and handed her fake ID to him. Her picture matched the disguise she was wearing.
“Name and date of birth?”
“Laura Isles. January 10, 1990.”
“Pride affiliation?”
“I don’t have one. I’m a Hobo.” If she claimed a particular pride affiliation, they’d check, and see through her story.
He exchanged glances with the other shifters. They were gathered around her now; there was nowhere for her to run.
“What pride were you born into?”
“My parents were also Hobos.” He glanced at her minivan. It was actually a pretty nice minivan. It suddenly occurred to her that most Hobos weren’t that well off. She’d screwed up by having a nice vehicle and respectable outfit. Most Hobos lived on the outskirts of society, doing odd jobs, just getting by.
“Hey! Aunt Laura! Are we ready to go yet?” a cheerful voice called out to her.
“What?” she spun around, startled.
A rather grimy young hyena shifter trotted up to them. He’d come from behind the store. Isadora guessed his age at around fourteen. He’d scrubbed his face, but she could see grime on his neck and hands. His clothing was worn and patched. Now, he looked like a Hobo.
He was accompanied by a mountain lion female of around ten years of age, who wore a filthy dress.
Aunt Laura? Who were these crazy kids? They couldn’t possibly have mistaken her for somebody else…could they have?
“It looks like the weather’s going to turn nasty later,” he added. “We should get going.”
Freaking great. WarriorDemon1 had sent kids to meet her.
“I saw that same weather report,” she said, and he gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement at her correct response.
“Who are you?” the warden asked him suspiciously.
“My name is Raymond. This is my aunt. We need to go, I have a doctor’s appointment.” He frowned at them impatiently.
“What’s your aunt’s date of birth?” the Warden persisted. The young interloper recited it, shifting from one foot to another.
The warden still looked skeptical. “She’s your aunt? You’re a hyena. And she’s a mountain lion,” he protested. He glanced at the young girl.
The hyena shifter looked at him indignantly. “Our family is very open-minded. Don’t judge.” And he yanked open the door to the minivan without a second glance, and the girl followed him.
Isadora suspected that, with his superior canine hearing, he’d overheard her fake name and the birth date and repeated it back. However, the wardens seemed to be buying it.
“How…” Warden Lawrence asked, his gaze darting from her to them.
She managed a pained smile. “Their parents were troubled. I took them in.”
He looked at the van and her clean clothing, and nodded approvingly. “Well, it looks like you’ve done well for yourself. They’re in good paws now.” He pulled out his wallet, fished out a few twenties, and handed them to her. “That’s for some new clothes for them.”
Well, now Isadora just felt bad. She’d find a way to get the money back to him.
“We’re looking for a female lynx shifter about your age,” he continued. “Black hair, tattoos, nose ring, kind of Goth appearance. She’s collaborating with that group of humans who kidnapped shifters.”
“I thought that group of humans had all been caught.” Isadora pretended to look horrified and concerned.
“Most of them. Unfortunately, some of them are still on the loose, and she’s been cooperating with them.” His tone was contemptuous, his lip curling as he said it.
Awesome. So that’s what she was now. The girl who’d betrayed every shifter in the land. Well, she’d known what she was signing up for.
She nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
Her heart still racing, she climbed in the van and drove off.
“Thanks for saving my furry hide back there, kid,” Isadora said, once they were a couple of miles down the road. “Did WarriorDemon1 send you?”
He straightened up and puffed out his narrow chest. “I am WarriorDemon1,” he said proudly.
She shot him a startled glance.
“You are WarriorDemon1? Seriously?”
She looked at the little girl. “Who are you?”
“Savageslayer.” The girl flashed a cheerful grin at her. “My real name’s Sally.”
“I’m Thomas,” the hyena said.
These were the Hobos she’d talked with in the chat room?
“You sounded completely different online!” she protested. “You talked about getting in fights and ripping out the throats of your Challengers!”
“Of course I did.” He rolled his eyes, and his tone indicated extreme impatience with stupid grownups. “If anyone knew I was a kid they might try to rob me and Sally, or kill us. You have to sound tough. It’s Internet Survival 101.”
“Duh,” Sally added helpfully.
“You knew all the Hobo code words!” she protested.
“My parents were Hobos. Or they are Hobos. They might be dead.”
“But…” her voice trailed off. “What happened? How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”
He shrugged indifferently. “I’ve been on my own since I was ten. They took off for different parts of the country.” At Isadora’s horrified look, he added “My uncle’s coming to get us. I’ve stayed with him before. I don’t mind being alone, but with Sally here, I was thinking it might be a good idea to have a grownup around for a while.”
“What happened the last time you stayed with him?”
“He left for a week to take a construction job. After he left, some humans set up camp near where our group was hanging out, so we left, and I couldn’t get in touch with him again. He’s kind of a technophobe. He stays off grid, never goes in the chat rooms.”
Isadora didn’t think that the uncle sounded that great, but who was she to interfere? And what better options could she offer? She was on the run from every shifter law enforcement agency in existence.
“What about you?” Isadora asked the young girl, with dismay.
“My father’s dead, and my stepfather’s a stupid asshole who hit me all the time,” the girl shrugged.
“Language!” Then Isadora nearly fell over. Dear God, she’d actually just sounded a tiny bit like her mother when she said that, which was litera
lly a fate worse than death.
“Sorry. He’s a jerk. Last year we were at a camp with a bunch of other Hobos and my stepfather hit me in the head because I tripped and spilled his can of beer, and Thomas had just come to the camp, and he jumped on him and bit his shoulder, and my stepfather threw him across the clearing, so I stabbed him with a spear.”
“Oh. Good for you.” Isadora’s eyes widened with surprise and a new respect.
“I was going to kill him before that, but my mom kept begging me not to,” Sally shrugged.
Apparently Savageslayer was not an inaccurate internet handle for Sally. “Did he die when you speared him?”
“I don’t know. Me and Thomas ran for it. We never heard from him again. My mother didn’t try to find me.” Her voice sounded wistful when she said that.
“Well, at least you’ve got Thomas.” Isadora found herself blinking hard. Allergies. Damn it, it was allergies! She didn’t have a soft or sentimental bone in her body.
“Yeah, he’s better than any mother,” Sally said, cheering up.
“So, is Pyotr at the camp?” Isadora had wanted to join up with this specific group of Hobos because of information that her superiors had passed down to her – information about a man from Korslovia.
They’d had Isadora looking all over the country for any shifters from that country. By asking around on all the Hobo boards, she’d finally tracked him down – and was surprised to find that he frequently hung out at the Hobo camp that was located only a couple of hours from Lonesome Pine.
“He doesn’t live at the camp. He stays in some caves nearby. He’s kind of paranoid and crazy. Something happened to him in some war, or something,” Thomas said.
A science laboratory, actually, but Thomas didn’t need to know about that, or all the things that had been done to the shifters there. From what Isadora had heard about the laboratory, it was amazing that he had any scraps of sanity left.
She could only hope that he’d be able to give her what she needed.
“We can take you to him tomorrow. Early is best, because he heads out in the morning to hunt,” Thomas said.
That worked for Isadora. She needed to catch up on some sleep anyway.
She fished around in her purse and pulled out a pack of wet wipes. “Wash your faces and hands,” she said, tossing the pack to Thomas.
“What!” Thomas let out an indignant squawk.
“You heard me. There’s a McDonald’s up ahead. I am not buying you lunch until you clean up.”
“McDonald’s!” Sally cheered, grabbed the pack of wet wipes, and began scrubbing at her face.
“Why should we clean up?” Thomas’s voice had taken on a sullen whine.
“Because I said so,” Isadora said, and then remembered how much she hated it when her mother said that. “And also because it helps you fit in, which helps keep you safe and also makes it easier to spy on people.”
“What do you mean?” Now Thomas was intrigued rather than sullen.
“When people look on you as an outsider, they don’t let you get close to them, and they’re watching you all the time, expecting the worst from you. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. So when you want to blend in and not attract any attention, you have to look like them and act like them. If you look dirty, wear dirty clothes and smell bad, shifters think you’re a Hobo, and humans think you’re trailer trash. Either way, you’ve just made it so everybody is watching you all the time.”
“That’s true,” Thomas said thoughtfully. He grabbed a wipe and began scrubbing. “Sometimes I need to kind of, you know, borrow a new laptop so I can get online, and it’s hard because security guards are always watching me. And Sally and me can’t go into any human towns or cities too much, because sometimes humans want to call welfare services on us.”
“That’s because they think you’re homeless. I’ll buy you both some new clothes today,” Isadora said. “I passed a clothing store a few miles back. Trust me, you’ll feel like a new man.”
Chapter Four
The Mosswood’s three story colonial style home loomed high, bigger than all the other houses in their subdivision. It was far more house than they needed for themselves and their daughter Diana, who still lived with them. Dash suspected it was meant to make a statement to all the other homes in their ritzy neighborhood, and the statement went something like “We’re richer than you. Suck it.” Except it would be phrased in much more elegant terms.
As Dash and Warden Redthorne walked up the driveway, he was careful not to tread on the perfectly manicured lawn. The hedges were trimmed so precisely they looked as if they were made of plastic. He was tempted to touch one and see if they were.
It was impossible to imagine the free-spirited Isadora growing up in this big, imposing house.
He’d been asked to come along because he’d had so many dealings with Isadora in the past couple of years that for some reason Redthorne seemed to think he might have special insight into her.
After they entered the mudroom and scraped their shoes across the rough carpet, a maid led them into a living room with a vaulted ceiling.
The man and woman who sat on the couch resembled Isadora physically. Dash could see where Isadora got her large green eyes, her small nose, her pale skin, the tilt of her eyebrows. The resemblance ended there.
He’d never seen Isadora without a mischievous gleam in her eyes. The woman sitting on the couch shared none of Isadora’s wicked sense of fun; she had a pinched expression of disapproval, and the man with her was scowling and angry. The Chief Elder of the Council Pride, a lion shifter named Hartley Blazetail, sat on a nearby chair. He was an older man in his seventies, with silver hair and a stern demeanor. The Mosswoods were trying to send a message, obviously: We’re well connected, don’t mess with us.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mosswood, thank you for agreeing to see us.” Warden Redthorne inclined his head politely. “Any information that you could give us about Isadora would be most helpful.”
They managed pained smiles, which vanished instantly.
“We haven’t heard from her, as we already told you on the phone,” Mr. Mosswood said, a look of disapproval creasing his face.
“So, I imagine you’ll head back home now,” Mrs. Mosswood added quickly.
Mr. Mosswood frowned. “We should remember our manners and at least offer them a beverage.” But he didn’t go so far as to actually offer them a beverage.
Dash glanced around the pristine interior. White sofa, white carpet, furniture and fabric in tones of white and gray.
“Is this where Isadora grew up?” he asked.
Mrs. Mosswood managed a small grimace of distaste. “So to speak, although she rarely came in the house. Such a terribly untidy child. We told her not to come inside if she was going to make a mess, so she’d just sleep outside in the trees half the time. Always preferred to spend her time outside, doing heaven knows what with heaven knows who.”
“I can imagine,” Dash muttered. He shuddered at the thought of growing up in that house. He was an only child, but his parents had the kind of house where everyone on the street loved to hang out. It was messy, it was cluttered, it was comfortable. It always smelled like just baked cookies. The air in the Mosswood’s house was heavily frosted with air freshener and smelled icy and unwelcoming.
“What?” Mrs. Mosswood cocked her head.
Warden Redthorne shot him a look, then turned to Mrs. Mosswood.
“Who did Isadora hang out with?” one of the Wardens asked.
“I just told you. I have no idea. Dreadful hooligan types. I certainly wouldn’t have let her friends on our property, much less in our house, so I never met them. So different than our other daughter. It’s hard to believe Isadora’s related to us.”
She gestured at a silver-framed picture of their daughter Diana, which adorned their flagstone fireplace. She looked like a cleaned up version of Isadora, smiling smugly at the camera, with a string of pearls around her neck. To his surprise, Dash realize
d that all the pictures on the fireplace were either Diana, or the Mosswoods and Diana. Isadora wasn’t featured in a single picture.
What the hell kind of family had Isadora grown up in?
Dash found himself growing angry on her behalf. He thought about the Battle family’s property, where he and his pack mates had grown up. Plenty of their family members had their odd quirks, but they were all loved, fiercely and protectively.
“Where are your pictures of Isadora?” Dash asked, just to make them uncomfortable. When Mrs. Mosswood flushed and scowled at him, he flashed an ingratiating smile and added “We’d like to have more pictures to send out to other agencies. Might increase the chances of someone recognizing her.”
The Mosswoods glanced at each other and then glanced back at Dash. “We might have some in the garage,” Mrs. Mosswood said, her face pinched as if she’d smelled something bad. “When Isadora moved out…well, she never really liked being in pictures anyway.”
“We always offered her the chance to be in our family photographs.” Mr. Mosswood glowered defensively. “All that she had to do was dress appropriately.”
And if she didn’t, she was excluded, Dash imagined.
“Can you get those pictures?” Warden Redthorne asked.
“Which pictures?” Mrs. Mosswood looked bewildered.
“The ones that you just said were in the garage.” Now his tone had an edge to it. “We need them. We want to circulate as many pictures as possible.”
“Can’t we just keep this quiet? It’s terribly embarrassing for us. You say she’s accused of treason. What has she done, specifically?” Mr. Mosswood asked.
“No, we can’t keep it quiet, and we’re not at liberty to give out any more details of what she’s done,” Chief Warden Redthorne said.
Mrs. Mosswood cast a beseeching gaze at Chief Elder Blazetail. “Hartley…”
However, in a case like this, even her wealth and influence only went so far. If Isadora was collaborating with humans to help kidnap shifters, she had to be stopped, and the whole sordid affair couldn’t be swept under the rug, no matter how much the Mosswoods might wish it.
Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) Page 3